The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, And The Birth Of Right And Left - Plot & Excerpts
Although they had given voice to deeply opposing political ideas for well over a decade, they had not yet quite grasped the degree of their profound dispute, and their time together, by all accounts, was pleasant and amicable. “I am just going to dine with the Duke of Portland, in company with the great American Paine,” Edmund Burke had written to a friend earlier that day.1 “From the part Mr. Burke took in the American Revolution,” Thomas Paine would later write, “it was natural that I should consider him a friend to mankind; and . . . our acquaintance commenced on that ground.”2 Their acquaintance would end on very different ground, and their disagreement—which was soon to explode into the open around the French Revolution—would not only help to define the politics of their age but would also reverberate through the centuries and around the globe. It is tempting now to think of those dinner companions that summer evening as embodiments of the ideas we have come to identify with them, and perhaps to wonder how they could have tolerated one another’s company, given their differences.
What do You think about The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, And The Birth Of Right And Left?
